


Ezekiel 1:23

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Post-Canon, Sparring, Trash Talk, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vignette, Wings, early stage Rivals to Lovers, medical scare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:33:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: “They remind me of something,” Mary muses. She goes to the desk, and gets the tablet she keeps by Shannon’s watercolor palettes. “Yeah, here. Is this you?”She’s run a search for bat fetuses. The image enlarged on the screen shows a grid of embryonic stages, in which tiny stubs develop into translucent fans.Lilith glowers. “You are not funny.”“I’m not joking. You’ve got self-healing skin and retractable claws. A big leathery pair of wings sounds like the complete package to me.”
Relationships: Sister Lilith/Shotgun Mary
Comments: 21
Kudos: 197





	Ezekiel 1:23

**Author's Note:**

> _And under the expanse their wings were stretched out straight, one toward another. And each creature had two wings covering its body._ \- Ezekiel 1:23 
> 
> Please be advised that this fic includes mention of potential disability and body horror.

She notices first on the sparring mat, though she doesn’t understand why. 

Mary seizes her left wrist and twists in a way that ought to bring Lilith, hunched and vulnerable, to knee-height. Instead, Lilith stays upright, arm pinned almost flat to her back, wrist beside her scapula. There’s no discomfort, let alone the hot spike of pain that should be shooting down from shoulder socket to elbow right now. 

Though her mind is still trying to catch up, her body recognizes this advantage, and she takes a step forward with her right foot to turn herself. Mary, steady as an oak at any other time, expects her to be on the floor by now and is off-balance because of it. She lets go and stumbles forward. Lilith raises her right hand and the stick it holds, and brings it about to land across Mary’s shoulders. 

It drives a grunt out of her, and Mary falls to her hands and knees. From the edge of the mat, the others applaud, though they’re golf claps--the Halo-Bearer is surely the only one who doesn’t realize that Lilith should, by rights, have lost. Mother Superion looks particularly cross. 

She bends to offer Mary a hand up. Mary shoots her a burning look before she takes it. “Let’s go again,” she pants, but Lilith is already backing away. 

“I need a shower,” she says. 

Mary mutters something, but Lilith doesn’t hear for the roar in her ears. She waits until she’s in the corridor to run; she has her training habit over her head before the door to her room is fully closed. 

A sudden onset of hypermobility could mean a great many things--none of them optimistic for her future in the OCS. She has been disciplining this body since she was a girl. To lose control over it is to lose her place here, to lose everything she’s fought for. 

But a degenerative disease, or some sort of pathogen causing cellular decay, isn’t consistent with the healing powers she somehow possesses now. And she still hasn’t figured out where premature white hair fits into all of it. 

All of that is insignificant, though, compared to what she thinks she felt back on the mat. 

She lets the training habit fall, and folds her left arm back to mimic the hold Mary put her in. Her fingertips brush over the place between her shoulderblades, where the Halo might have gone, in a different life. Back by the left scapula, she feels it again: a rounded lump the size of her thumbtip. 

If Hell gave her cancer, she’s going to take the Cruciform Sword and go cut her way through Salvius’s machine and-- 

She blows out a breath and turns toward the door. A draught reminds her to put on a clean habit first. She clutches it closed at the back, and goes three doors down the hall. 

Mary is hanging her kneepads to air out by the open window when Lilith bursts in. “Are you double-jointed?” she asks. “I feel like I would have noticed you could do freaky circus stuff like that.” 

“I need you to look at something.” Lilith turns and holds the habit open. 

“What,” says Mary, “you want an opinion on where to put a tattoo?” 

“The _lump_. Can you see it?” She points. 

“Am I Hand Mirror Mary now?” But she’s coming closer; Lilith tracks her footsteps and finally feels the heat of her at her back. She forces herself to concentrate on Mary’s room. It’s sparse, like all of their rooms, but until recently Mary’s was seldom lived in. She travels light-- _when you have two shotguns, you don’t need much else_ \--and the only things she keeps out are items Lilith last saw in Shannon’s room. 

“I don’t see a lump,” Mary says. 

“Really?” It comes out as a gust, thick with her relief. 

“I see two.” Mary puts one thumb against the edge of each of Lilith’s shoulderblades. They are, abruptly, the only warm spots on Lilith’s body. “Here, and here. Lilith, these aren’t tumors. They feel like bone.” 

“Bone,” Lilith echoes around a stone-dry tongue. 

“Here.” Mary gets a mirror from the drawer of her desk. Lilith cranes her neck and aims it, and there they are, perfectly symmetrical, only slightly raised beneath her skin. She moves her right arm. The lump doesn’t quite move with the scapula, but it does move. 

“They remind me of something,” Mary muses. She goes to the desk, and gets the tablet she keeps by Shannon’s watercolor palettes. “Yeah, here. Is this you?” 

She’s run a search for bat fetuses. The image enlarged on the screen shows a grid of embryonic stages, in which tiny stubs develop into translucent fans. 

Lilith glowers. “You are not funny.” 

“I’m not joking. You’ve got self-healing skin and retractable claws. A big leathery pair of wings sounds like the complete package to me.” 

The most horrifying thing is that it makes perfect sense. Lilith shoves the mirror at her. “Don’t tell the others.” 

Keeping secrets from the team is the height of folly. It got Shannon killed, and no matter how different Lilith would be as a leader, she isn't fool enough to think she could avoid the same. 

But Mary, who knows how and when to leverage someone's shame, only says, “Until when? Until they pop out of your back? Are you gonna start wearing trenchcoats? Backless habits?” 

“Until it’s a liability,” Lilith bites, close enough now for Mary’s breath to warm her face. 

Mary doesn’t flinch. She regards Lilith, gaze softening. Carefully she turns and places the tablet and mirror on her bed, and then faces her again the same distance away, and she says, “What did I tell you, Lilith?” 

Lilith clenches her jaw and looks at anything but Mary. 

“I know you’re scared. You can’t hide that from me, and you don’t have to. What did I tell you?” 

“You see me,” Lilith whispers between her teeth. 

“I see you.” 

“You’ve got me.” 

Mary hooks her arm behind Lilith and pulls her close. “I’ve got you,” she agrees against the side of Lilith’s neck. 

She’s shaking. “Hell swallowed me, and spat me back a monster.” 

“But it did spit you back.” Mary’s arms tighten, both of them around her now, her hands warm against Lilith’s back over the stubs, her fingers outstretched like wings. “They couldn’t handle you.” 

Her voice is starting to return. “Like you _can_.” 

“Oh, there she is. Baby girl, as soon as I figure out how to deal with your new rubber band joints, you’ll be looking up at me from the mat again.” 

“You want to try now?” Lilith locks her arms around Mary’s waist, ready to grapple. 

“You’re not dressed for it.” 

She almost offers to take the habit off. But if she does that, this will go someplace very different, someplace Lilith isn’t ready to go. She draws back. “Next time, then.” 

Mary lets her go to the door without resistance. “We’ve got time before you start flying.” 

And when she says it, it doesn’t sound that bad. 

**Author's Note:**

> I only made it a couple pages into the original Warrior Nun Areala comic books, but the one thing they need to keep for the show is Lilith with wings. 
> 
> Cheers for reading! I'm @hauntedfalcon on Tumblr, if you'd like to yell with me about this show.


End file.
